It looks like there are increasing voices in the Euro-Parliament suggesting heightened penalties on employers who hire illegals.
Criminalizing the immigrants is not the way to go, and it does not work. Instead, go after the people who hire illegals.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
What This Means
This graph, from The Big Picture, means some combination of the following items:
- The economy of the past 18 years has sucked so badly that people have increasingly given up looking up.
- The basic unemployment number has been screwed with by administrations on both sides of the aisle, and significantly understates the unemployment rate.
- That the economy has shifted significantly in the past 2 decades, and high levels of long term unemployment are the norm.
My money is mostly on number 2, though reverse Robin Hood is part of it.
Short term solution is more aid to the long term unemployed. The long term solution is fixing the BLS data, and creating a more just society.
Truth be told, I’m surprised that the divergence did not occur around 1983, when Reagan and His Evil Minions™ screwed with the unemployment numbers with things like counting active duty military as a part of the workforce, to keep the unemployment number below 10.
Check out Daniel Gross in Slate, who argues that the normal unemployment numbers are complete crap.
HooCoodANode*
It appears that the Federal Reserve’s entry into the commercial market is not encouraging private actors to reenter the market.
When no one wants to lend commercial paper, and the US government steps in and lends at below market rates, it tends to drives the private players out.
*Who Could A Knowed
Update on Lieberman
It looks like Reid told him that his committee chairmanship was toast.
Considering the fact that he has slammed the party’s nominee and refused to use his position as head of the Homeland Security committee to pursue legitimate issues against Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, I think that Reid is being too magnanimous.
It goes without saying that Lieberman with investigatory powers will spend his time trying to inflict injury to the Democrats who rejected him in the primary by harassing Obama.
It Now Appears that the McCain Campaign Was Even More Fracked Up Than We Knew
It appears that the McCain and Palin were waging war on one another.
Considering some of the stories that I’ve heard, the war is ongoing.
Time to buy more popcorn.
Ralph Nader Should Be Excluded from Polite Society
And quite honestly, any orgs that remain tied to him should be excluded from offices of political figures…..Here he calls Barack Obama an Uncle Tom on, of course, Fox news.
He may be the only person in Washington, DC more smarmily sanctimonious than Joe Lieberman.
More Circular Firing Squad
Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to McCain for years, got fired a week before election day.
It appears that he was leaking stuff to the press that dissed his fellow campaign members to the apparrent benefit of Palin:
One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading “disinformation” about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.
“He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain’s campaign message,” said one of the aides.
And I thought that Hillary’s campaign team was dysfunctional.
I’d rather have Mark Penn on my side than any of these guys….I can’t fracking believe that I just said that.
Russian Missiles to Kalaningrad
The Russians legitimately see the BMD system in Poland as a threat, and they are taking what they see as appropriate action. (See also here)
This was foreseeable. It’s natural for the Russians to see the system as a direct challenge, particularly since the location of the interceptors and radar are better more suited to protecting Europe from Russia than from Iran, which is the putative reason for the installation in the first place.
It’s also a challenge to Obama, which complicates things, because it makes it harder for him to do the smart thing, which is to relocate the installation further south or cancel it completely.
I’m Just Not Into You That Way, Anymore…
Said the cheerleader to her calculus tutor at the end of the semester.
I think that this is an accurate summary of the meeting between Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman scheduled for tomorrow.
I don’t know if he should be kicked out of the caucus, but damn, he should not be chairman of anything.
Election Updates
Democratic stronghold Multnomah County (Portland) is among the last of the counties to finish up, and now it looks like Merkley has defeated Smith for the Oregon Senate, according to the Oregonian analysis.
In Georgia, it looks like there will be a runoff for the senate. It will be a long shot, but Chambliss is a human stain, and it’s the only election, at least until Ted Stevens gets kicked out of the Senate.
In CO-4, Marilyn Musgrave lost to Betsey Markey which hopefully puts an end to the explosions of bigotry that have eminated from Musgrave in her attempts to protect us from “Te Gay”.
In New York, the state Republican party is in the wilderness for at least a decade. They lost the state senate, and in an increasingly Democratic state, this means that they will be unable to Gerrymander themselves into viability as they have over the past two decades.
Please, redistrict now in New York.
In MD-1 it’s still to close to call, with Frank Kratovil ahead of Fred Flintstone the Antedeluvian Andrew Harris by less than 1000 votes, 160,915 to 160,000, with 25,539 absentee ballots returned so far, 11,371 Dem, 10,924 Rep, and 3,244 ind.
But Kratovil does appear to be in the lead, even if he has not locked it up yet.
Burner-Reichert, WA-08, is still too close to call.
In the Minnesota senate, the margin is around 400 votes, which calls for a mandatory runoff, but of course, Coleman is telling Franken that the right thing to do for the country is to give up….What a weasel.
Wasilla Hillbillies Looting Neiman Marcus from Coast to Coast
That’s got to be the quote of the campaign.
The circular firing squad has begun.
Our Broken Defense Budgets
A paper by the Center for Defense Information, “The Other Meltdown: Little to Show for Huge Defense Budgets.”
Money quote:
Perhaps you need a short review. America’s defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II. However, our Army has fewer combat divisions than at any point in that period, our Navy has fewer combat ships and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft.
Go read.
Why I Read Rich Toscano
Because he takes some complex issues and makes them eqasily understood.
Case in point, credit default swaps, which he likens to highly profitable unregulated flood insurance companies during a decade of drought.
Go read.
African National Congress Party Appears to Be Fracturing
The splinter group is is calling itself the South African Democratic Congress, and the ANC has sued, claiming that the name is too confusing.
The fracturing of the ANC may be a very good thing. Parties are always opaque to outsiders, and having a meaningful multiparty system tends to bring openness.
I still wonder how much of this is about Jacob Zuma, and how much is an issue of class distinctions between the Oxbridge educated people who have traditionally held leadership roles, and their less cosmopolitan associates.
If You Can’t Make It There, YOu Can’t Make it Anywhere
Because New York City commercial property sales are collapsing, and those sales that are made are being done by
companies leaving Manhattan for Brooklyn in order to save costs.
And while we are at it, we have a hollow condo in Brooklyn, One Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is still 2/3 empty.
If you cannot make money in real estate in New York, you cannot make money in real estate anywhere.
Spencer Ackerman Misses the Big Picture
quotes the following from the Heritage Foundation:
October 30, 2008
The New Cold War: Reviving the U.S. Presence in the Arctic
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., Lajos F. Szaszdi, Ph.D., and Jim Dolbow
Backgrounder #2202The Arctic is quickly reemerging as a strategic area where vital U.S. interests are at stake. The geopolitical and geo-economic importance of the Arctic region is rising rapidly, and its mineral wealth will likely transform the region into a booming economic frontier in the 21st century. The coasts and continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean are estimated to hold large deposits of oil, natural gas, and methane hydrate (natural gas) clusters along with large quantities of valuable minerals.
He seems to think that, “important corners of the Republican Party remain frothing, bloodshot-eyeball insane.”
He’s wrong. These folks are completely sane. The Republican party, of which the Heritage foundation is an integral part, needs to have a big scary enemy to further their partisan electoral goals.
Additionally, it furthers their policy goals, because the money going into the military makes it difficult to find resources for social programs.
This is not insanity, this is a complete lack of conscience. War is just a way to win elections.
Stealth Run on UBS?
Because the report that, “Customers pull their money out of ailing UBS,” from Swissinfo sounds like this might be going on.
F.C.C. Approves Unlicensed Use of White Space
Basically unused over the air TV channels, and the technology has been shown to be feasible, so the F.C.C. voted unanimously to approve the change.
Basically, it means that anyone who makes a device that works properly, basically senses and avoids around the spectrum, can use it.
Things like device certification and the specific regulations still have to be devised though.
This is good news, as the old TV channels give significant advances relative to WiFi in range, penetration, and bandwith.
The broadcasters oppose this, because, quoting a friend in the biz:
1) NIMBY.
2) Bad precedent for broadcasters. They have made everybody believe they OWN this spectrum. Now they don’t.
3) [David] Rehr, who assumed control of the NAB in 2005 after Eddie Fritz retired, has not managed to get a single major policy win. After losing badly on XM-Sirius, he desperately needs a win to avoid getting the boot.
The wireless microphone industry opposes this too, but for a different reason, they already use the spectrum illegally and don’t want a change.
I’ve worked on installations of mission critical military equipment, though, in deference to the some comments that I got, it was not hand held, it was vehicle mounted.
Gives Me Shivers
A snipped from an interview eith Seymour Hersh:
…for Hersh this will be a starting gun. ‘You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of the next president’s inauguration],’ he says, with relish. ‘[They say:] ‘You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.’ So that is what I’ll do, so long as nothing awful happens before the inauguration.’
(emphasis mine)
I am trembling like a school girl.
Economics Update
Calculated Risk: Fannie Mortgage Bond Spreads Decline
Well, we have payroll services firm ADP saying that job cuts in October totaled 157,000, above the 100,000 predicted, with September numbers up too, and Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the grim reapers of the corporate world reporting that more firms are planning to cut jobs.
Meanwhile the ISM’s non-manufacturing index, an index of the service economy, fell to 44.4 the worst number recorded since the index was created in 1997.
It’s not just the US either. U.K. factory output is dropping like a stone.
In the credit crunch, while gross interest are improving, the spreads between these interest rates and treasury notes remain high.
For example, the LIBOR rate has fallen to 2.51% from 4.82% on 10/10, but the spread remains 151 basis points (1.51%) over the Fed’s target rate
Prior to the credit crunch it averaged 22 basis points.
This may be mortgage applications are down, banks are still skittish, and costs are higher.
This is a normal response by banks when you consider that you have things like the bath that Glitnir swap sellers took. They look to being left with 3¢ on the dollar.
The swaps in question are a sort of bond insurance, so it’s no surprise that the two largest, monoliners Ambac and MBIA just posted big losses.
It appears that there are expectations of more rate cuts, as the dollar is down, though paradoxically, so is crude oil….Normally, they tend to move in opposite directions.